


Someone has to push the rubble to the side of the road

by heylifeitsemily



Category: The Outer Worlds (Video Game)
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, F/M, Light Angst, Like very pre-relationship. like it is going to take some TIME to get past this one boys, Pre-Relationship, Talking It Out Like Adults, spoilers for Max's companion quest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-01
Updated: 2020-04-01
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:47:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23419216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heylifeitsemily/pseuds/heylifeitsemily
Summary: “You were right. I wouldn’t have brought you planet-side if I’d known your intentions. But what I’m more concerned with is that you knew that, and you were sure enough in it to lie to me.”Max opens his mouth to speak then, but she denies him the chance. “It begs the question. What do you take me for?”
Relationships: The Captain/Maximillian DeSoto
Comments: 6
Kudos: 36





	Someone has to push the rubble to the side of the road

The Captain isn’t surprised by the knock at her door, nor in finding the Vicar on the other side of it, stood dutifully with his hands clasped behind his back. His hair seems out of sorts, but only slightly, only something she’s able to notice after watching him run gel through it early in the mornings when he hogs the bathroom.

His lips are pulled taut, and whatever apprehension she can find pales to what she would expect if their positions were reversed.

She steps back to let him in before shutting the door behind them. It won’t do much good with the way sound carries through the halls, but they’ve each learned to live with the illusion of privacy in the absence of the thing itself. He stands in the center of the room with a curious air, surveying the knick-knacks and accoutrements she’s acquired thus far. Composed. Unfair, since she’s fighting the wobble in her knees when she hops up onto her desk.

“Are you able to look me in the eye? Or have I lost that privilege too, along with your ear?”

Her eyes snap away from the blinking lights of the Edgewater sign and narrow at him. His head is tilted just so, and if she held him in lower esteem, she might call it an intimidation tactic. Could be his height or the general haughtiness she’s come to associate with his upturned nose and half-smile, but even with the respectable distance between them, he towers over her.

Briar is not a particularly tall nor formidable woman, but she’s been feeling exceptionally small as of late. Sleep has been a rare luxury since she woke up this side of the Milky Way – a side effect that Phineas assures her is perfectly normal. Quirks in her metabolism means her body can go for longer stretches without rest, and at first it seemed a gift. More time to make sense of it all.

Now it’s left her with all too much, and whenever her head _does_ hit the pillow, she’s shooting up from her cot with another nightmare. They’ve come on more often since Fallbrook. And they’ve started to wear a very familiar face.

He’s rougher round the edges in the waking world – scuffed boots and the tattered hem of his cassock, the way he holds his jaw too tight, and that hair just a little ruffled. By the time she meets his gaze, he looks indignant at the scrutiny.

“Say your testimony, Vicar.”

“I wasn’t aware I was on trial.” She fixes him with a hard look, one more familiar to those on the other end of her scope than her companions. He nods. “Right. I had wanted to thank you for talking some sense into me with Chaney.”

The tremor in her hand picks the oddest times to start acting up. “Had?”

“I still do, of course. It’s just that I would have done so sooner had I been permitted the opportunity. You instead seemed content with your petulance.” At her scoff, he continues on. “Do you know of a better word for sulking? Avoiding my company, dodging any and all attempts to discuss the elephant in the room?”

The shake’s getting worse. Both of them watch her hand as she presses it flat against her thigh. It was silly to assume someone as self-assured as Max wouldn’t think any lesser of her for it.

“You know, if nothing else I can appreciate your sincerity,” she says. “I’ve met very few people who can be a complete tool without so much as batting an eye.” Something malicious warms in her chest to see him flinch, mouth opening and closing without a word to show for it. “And until this point, I have been _exceedingly_ patient in letting you do and say damn near whatever you like. Maybe a little too lenient.”

She can accuse Max of many faults with a laundry list of anecdotes to evidence her claims, but obliviousness could not be counted among them. Her bouts of insomnia had often led to his room, late night conversations that felt suspiciously like confessions until she started poking holes in his platitudes. She would visit with questions of theology in the wee hours of the morning, escalating into full-on debates by the light of day. But the rare occasions on which she got him to concede weren’t half so rewarding as watching him crack a smile.

It wasn’t the most easy-going friendship she’d ever had, but it had been just that – friendship. Mistakenly presumed to be mutual.

“This was a wake-up call to some aspects of your character that I’d been putting out of mind,” she continues. “You’ll have to forgive me for needing time to think on it.”

“And what have you found in your deliberation?” He’s talented at instilling his tone with a biting amount of skepticism, but far less skilled at masking it. The muscle in his jaw tightens again, and she knows him better than to call it nerves.

“You were right. I wouldn’t have brought you planet-side if I’d known your intentions. But what I’m more concerned with is that you _knew_ that, and you were sure enough in it to lie to me.”

Max opens his mouth to speak then, but she denies him the chance. “It begs the question. What do you take me for?”

He falters at that, but there is none of the usual satisfaction in getting him off-kilter. Why is his hair that smallest bit disheveled? How can he look at her without an ounce of shame?

“Have you ever seen me pull a gun on someone who wasn’t already shooting at me? Was there a point where I decided I’d be better off fighting my way out of a situation than talking? Even once? You knew that when we got there that I’d have my misgivings, so either you think I’m fucking spineless enough to sit back and let you beat a man within an inch of his life, or _despite_ knowing all of that, you put me in a position where I’d have no choice but to – “

Her voice breaks then. She fights the urge to cover her face, cheeks burning, and the breath she takes comes shuddering and uneven with how close she is to tears. _Stupid_. Days and days to work out the whole spiel, and it’s no surprise that it’s still coming out half-baked and off the mark.

He’s watching her hand again; she ought to just cut the thing right off if it was going to betray her at every turn.

“To what, Captain?”

She could still blame it on wounded pride, on being deceived into thinking he’d genuinely enjoyed her company. He might even buy it if she laughed at herself a few times during. Pretended that it was absurd now that she’s said it all out loud.

But her hand won’t stop _shaking_ and she can’t fucking _sleep_ without seeing –

“You were using me to get that far. I had to ask myself, exactly how expendable am I?” She swallows, and the laugh that escapes her sounds downright mournful. “The Law didn’t put me there, Vicar. You did.”

It’s a tenet they return to often; he argues that the refutation of the grand plan is responsible for human suffering, and she laughs and says if she burns his house and casts him out into the streets, who is to blame? Is his suffering a result of his unwillingness to accept his circumstances? Or is it her, holding a jug of kerosene and a match? He claims that she’s taking it too literally, that it is more the struggle against one’s lot in life that proves heretical. But what, she presses, defines one’s circumstance if not the actions of others? Who is allowed to step forward, and who must give way to their pursuit?

He throws his hands up. The discussion is circular, her short-sightedness ignoring the teleological order that all beings exist within, too sentimental and far too naïve.

And then she’ll ask him if it matters. If whether the universe is governed by a branch of cosmic destiny or unfettered chaos has any consequence at all, or if it is only a scapegoat.

If the only accountability that matters is him to her, and her to him.

Space is cold, cold enough that even in the comfort of her quarters she bundles up in layer upon layer, but the light it gives off is brilliant. When she looks up, he will be shouting at her in indignation bathed in an orange glow, or too proud to value her opinion, sneering about cowardice while her shaking hands burn gold.

Instead, he murmurs, “and yet you defended him.”

“Yeah, well." She shrugs. “There’s your survival of the fittest in action.”

The silence stretches long and heavy. Max stands resolute, tension in his shoulders, the hands behind his back likely curled into fists. But if she blinks, it is still easy to mistake him for a man of peace, just as she did in the candlelit discussions of his religion, when his hand would wrap around her forearm after a fight to ask if she had been hurt. Even now, broad and imposing, peering at her with a single-minded intensity, she can see the fairy tale she’s made of him.

“You’re welcome to stay on the ship,” she says, and at least that comes out firm, if nothing else could. “But if I’m to be a means to an end, Vicar, I’d like to be treated as such. Saves me the trouble of coming to terms with it later on.”

Her gaze drops to her hands again, and she massages the right as it spasms, thumb pressing into her palm until a dull ache spreads through the muscles beneath. She’s got callouses from handling her rifle, ragged burns from where a plasma beam just skimmed her knuckles. Captain Alex Hawthorne’s hands are steady and true as she greets every bureaucrat and worker they come across, and she marches through the day with ease, not a hint of doubt in mind nor body.

But here, in the comparative comfort of her quarters, she’s Briar Kaplan. And her hands shake.

She _is_ a coward, waiting for his retreating footsteps instead of dismissing him herself. She jolts when she hears him take a step forward rather than back, and when she looks up, his hands are held up in front of him. He lowers them slowly to his sides.

“I owe you an apology, for far more than I realized.” A lesser man, a humbler man, may have shuffled his feet. “I had been obsessed for so long, everything else was secondary to,” he sighs, eyes searching her face and as lost as she’s ever seen him. She’s half-afraid he’ll start reciting scripture just to find his footing.

“You offered me a place on your crew, and I had accepted it with every intention of using you to get to Chaney. And when my deception came to light, you saved me from an act I don’t think I would have been able to live with. I never meant…”

He takes a step forward, and when she doesn’t flinch away again, another. “I know that I can be abrasive.” At her raised brow, he amends, “I _am_ abrasive, and as you so eloquently put it, have a penchant for being a complete tool. I am thus all the more grateful for your friendship, as little as my actions reflect it.

“You owe me nothing, I know – but I am begging your forgiveness. And no matter the outcome, it is imperative that you know that you will never be in any danger from me.”

He’s close enough now that he could reach out and touch her, and she can see the bones of it starting to form in his mind. But he keeps that distance, and listens. Listens like a preacher should – calm, reassuring, focused. That undivided attention took getting used to, weeks of blushing just from the intensity with which he regarded her across that tiny desk in his quarters. This differs in a few particulars, the way his hands twitch with restless energy, a slight widening of the eyes. She finds herself on the other side of confession, and the gravity of it settles deep in her gut.

Her tongue twists itself in knots under his steady gaze, so the next thing out of her mouth is, “thought begging was supposed to be done on your knees, Vicar.”

“Max,” he says, in lieu of something scathing.

“Max.” It does little to encapsulate the self-righteousness, the vitriol, the determination that she’s come to know him by, but it speaks to something gentler that she thought unreciprocated. “I don’t think I’m there yet.”

“Yet?” he repeats, with the gall to sound hopeful.

“I don’t know how long it’s going to take before I...” she trails off. “Don’t wait up for me tonight, is all.”

That would normally draw out one of his half-smiles, but as it stands, he simply nods in response. There’s still a tightness at the back of her neck that she knows nothing but a good sleep can shake, but looking at him isn’t so difficult as it was when he first walked in. At least, not for the same reasons; the weight of his gaze has always been perturbing in its own right.

“Have you eaten yet this evening?” He asks. “There were some Bred Noodles left in the cupboard, if Felix hasn’t gotten to them already.”

It’s a question she usually poses to the rest of the crew, and they both seem keenly aware of how odd trivial concern sounds falling from his lips. A cynical part of her wants to call it Max trying to speed up her processing to match his schedule, but there’s a sheepishness to it that dashes that on the rocks.

“I’m gonna try to catch some sleep, actually, but thanks for the invitation.”

He nods again, scanning the room. The cumulative exhaustion of days of unrest is settling on her shoulders all at once, her threadbare cot almost managing to look comfortable. “Max, I wanted to sleep right now. Immediately.“

“Right, yes. It's just that I... I want to stress that if you ever feel threatened by my presence again, please tell me. I will take myself off of this ship the moment you do.”

And maybe it’s the fatigue, and maybe it’s to get him to stop looking at her so intently, and maybe it’s a genuine belief in him that she thought sullied, but she finds herself nodding along.

“Deal.” He regards the hand she holds out to him a moment, lingering long enough that she’s about to pull back when she comes to the same realization.

Huh. No more shaking.

He clasps her hand firmly in both of his, and with that makes his way out of her quarters.

Briar all but collapses onto her cot, and even with a weariness that’s worn down to her bones, she still struggles to fall asleep. She focuses on little details to lull herself off – the number of bolts in the sheet metal above her (twenty-six), the last time she wore legwarmers (six? seven years ago?), and somewhere against the whir of the ship, she hears footsteps pacing back and forth in a small room (four steps across), broken only with the thud of a book being replaced on its shelf.

When she wakes, Ada informs her that she achieved three and a half uninterrupted hours of rest. Her neck smarts something awful, and her cheeks still feel sallow as she rubs the sleep out of her eyes.

But it’s a start. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from Wisława Szymborska's poem "The End and the Beginning" (https://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/141.html), which I would definitely recommend if you have the time.
> 
> I can't say I'm thrilled with how Max's companion quest ended (his so-called enlightenment did not feel earned to say the least and if you ask me to I will discuss this at length), but I definitely found this mid-point intriguing, enough so that I'm still trying to figure out how to go about the ensuing discussion months after I finished the game. Eleanor would have been most hurt by him lying to her, Teddy would have been furious that he thinks so little of her as to expect her to sit by while he beats a man to death, and Briar was well and truly scared of him for the first time in their knowing each other. And how would Max react to that fear? It goes beyond a question of lack of trust or pride, but to the point where someone he respects and cares for feels unsafe with him around. Trust is difficult to earn and easily lost, and he's plenty familiar with pride. 
> 
> But fear is new, and perhaps the hardest to come back from. Maybe something to revisit from his perspective one day.
> 
> Hope you liked it! And as always, it's just me writing for several hours and then fixing each new spelling mistake I find over the course of the next few months, so if you spot something, lemme know! Also, if anyone can justify why I did this instead of the 1500 word essay worth like 40% of my final grade due on Friday, please, enlighten me.


End file.
